31 December, 2015

I have a confession that may surprise some people – even those who know me well:
I’m not a very good reader.

It’s not a literacy problem; I’ve just always been rather poor at reading books. Of course, I’m constantly reading ’blogs and columns, and magazine articles before that, but I’ve always needed a certain peace of mind to sit down and devour a complete book. Don’t ask me why. And due to my programming, it’s a peace of mind that comes all too rarely. As a result, my reading habits have traditionally been somewhat bulimic – I would binge for a month or so, and then read no books for sometimes years at a stretch.

In a crowded field, it’s something I’ve liked least about myself. I’ve always admired people who constantly have a book on the go and wanted to be like them – and I expect many of my friends assume I am – but I wasn’t.

That changed this year. It started when I took several books on holiday with me. It’s not unusual that I do this when I go away. What’s unusual is that this time I read almost all of them. I expected to slack off once I got home, but then I wanted to finish Mike Scott’s Adventures of a Waterboy before I saw The Waterboys in March. Realising I was in a binge-reading phase, I was determined to keep it going. Much to my surprise, I did.

I have read 32 books for the year. Now I must admit, a lot of them were short takes of less than a hundred pages, but by either titles or page count, that’s more than I’ve read in the previous ten years – in terms of books, anyway.

It’s not as if the peace of mind usually needed to sit down with a book was around this year. Indeed, it was conspicuous by its absence. For reasons not relevant to this topic, it has been a hellishly stressful year. This was also the year I did seek medical intervention for the aforementioned programming, but I was well into my binge by the time that started.

If I can credit one thing for giving me the reading habits I’ve always wanted, it’s Goodreads.

I first joined Goodreads years ago in order to keep up with my dearest’s reading. She uses it mostly for keeping track of her own reading rather than to interact with others or brag, but let me tell you, she has plenty to brag about in terms of reading numbers. I gradually started adding books that I’d read. And then when I discovered the bar-code reading feature of the mobile app, I started adding all the books I had yet to read, and it made me somewhat ashamed. I started tracking my reading on Goodreads and added a few people I know from Twitter and Facebook, and now I get the feeling that friends will notice if I start slacking off – even though they probably pay no attention to my updates.

Oh dear! Social media again. Such narcissism!

Yes, I plead guilty to social media narcissism, but let’s also admit that we’re all narcissists in one way or another. If it weren’t for narcissism, we wouldn’t comb our hair or change our clothes either, so while I’m not suggesting that narcissism is any kind of virtue, it can be channelled for good.

I went to a little gallery ten years ago called the Museum of Particularly Bad Art, or something along those lines, and the proprietor said that its existence was testament to the fact that if you give voice to your dreams, then someone is going to make you follow them.

No-one in particular is making me follow my dream of being a better reader, but now I feel bad if I haven’t updated my reading progress a couple of times a week – and have something decent to show in those updates.

I haven’t connected my account to any other accounts – I’m not spamming my Facebook friends every time I finish a chapter, so by modern standards it’s not oversharing, but there are worse ways to overshare. So if there’s something you’re determined to do, try telling people about it. They don’t have to follow you, and maybe not many people will, but just the thought that someone may be watching can help you to finish what you started.

06 December, 2015

For anyone who is wondering, this is purely for my own reference. After several years of numerous "social bookmarking" sites, none of which do exactly what I want, this is where I now put all the stuff that might be useful to refer back to one day.
Linking does not necessarily imply endorsement, but then again, it might. You work it out.
Anyway...

18 November, 2015

I am so happy for Tony Abbott. Really, I am. He’s back where he belongs – and I don’t mean that in a nasty way.

Despite his incredible desire for the job, being the prime minister never really suited him. He wore the leadership like a like a school uniform he was required to wear when he would have preferred to be in his footy gear.

Basically, executive government cramped Tony’s style. The mundanity of having to deal with the day-to-day issues of government, feigning an interest in things that were never on his agenda, and the need for compromise that leadership brings wasn’t really what he wanted.

As David Marr pointed out in his Quarterly Essay, Political Animal, for much of his time in parliament, Tony Abbott seemed to prefer using his office to write lengthy opinion pieces for sympathetic publications, to the business of government or representing his electorate.

With Tony Abbott’s return to the opinion pages of The Spectator and TheAustralian, we can see now that his removal as leader was not an act of treachery, but an act of mercy. He is free now. He has been returned to his natural habitat, where he can advocate for his worldview without having to answer pesky questions or convince cross-benchers. He has the best of both worlds – a major platform to speak on how government should act, without the tedium of actually governing.

There are those who are far better at saying how things ought to be than being responsible for how things are, and Abbott is certainly one of them. Don’t feel bad for Tony. Whether he realises it or not, he’s where he always wanted to be.

17 November, 2015

Like any other sentient being, I’ve had thoughts flying all over the place regarding the terrorist attacks on Paris over the weekend. Most of what I have to say has been said far better by many others but even so, I thought I would break things down for those who should know better.

Picking out a few characteristics of the attackers does not tell you how or why the attacks happened. It should be obvious, but from the look of many attitudes, it seems that some need reminding.

Yes, they were Muslim.
That doesn’t make it a Muslim thing. Nor does it make it a religious thing.

Yes, at least some of them were Syrian.
That doesn’t make it a Syrian thing.
It doesn’t make it an immigrant thing and it certainly doesn’t make it a refugee thing. Refugees are the ones fleeing murderous extremists.

And yes, one of them did travel as a refugee.
ONE.
Out of millions.
So if you want to use this as a pretext to reject refugees, remember that you are already 4.5 times more likely to die falling out of bed than in any kind of terrorist attack, and that is before we even factor in terrorists who specifically masqueraded as refugees. If you still think that’s something worth worrying about, you probably think Powerball is a sound investment.

If we are serious about confronting the threat – and no-one is denying the threat – we have to stop bending the situation to our own prejudices.

It’s also a fact that they were all male, as are the overwhelming majority of terrorists of all creeds. Maybe it’s a male thing?

So why aren’t men being called upon to renounce terrorism or else be presumed sympathetic to terrorist causes?

They were all in their 20s. Maybe it’s a youth thing. Maybe we should lock everyone up until they’re 30.

Or would that be ridiculous?

= = =

A couple of other short observations:

If the US wants to stand with France, as they should, they could start by apologising for calling the French cheese-eating surrender monkeys when they refused to be part of the invasion that ultimately allowed ISIS to flourish.

To those who want to blame gun control: If you seriously think that a handful of people with concealed handguns could, in a large, dark, loud room, take out a bunch of fanatics firing Kalashnikovs indiscriminately, then you probably watch too much television.

About Me

Computer tutor, IT handyman, presenter of Strawberry Fields Radio, occasional songwriter and musician, and writer of some notes.
Here you will find my thoughts on music, politics, music DVDs and life in general.
I read the comments.
By the way, if anyone is wondering, since it’s an abbreviation of web-log, ’blog should be spelt with an apostrophe, like ’phone.